The Odeonsplatz Concert: Gergiev conducts Beethoven

The Odeonsplatz Concert is entertainment of the highest standard, given the world class of the artists and the quality of the programs presented here year by year. This time Valery Gergiev and the Münchner Philharmoniker present an all Beethoven programme including the Coriolan Overture and the monumental Fifth Symphony, which “becomes a profound, heroic triumph, fabulous, stunning” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). PROGRAM L.v. Beethoven: Coriolan Overture; Symphony No. 5

Mariss Jansons and Daniel Barenboim perform Beethoven & Prokofiev

Daniel Barenboim returns to Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO) for a very special collaboration – ten years after his first performance as piano soloist with them. Together they present a stunning rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. Hardly any other musician has studied the works of Beethoven as thoroughly as Barenboim and he turns the second movement into something special indeed: the calmness and intimacy of the Adagio is second to none. “No other piano player creates such a magical atmosphere in the quiet passages; no other is capable of stopping time hypnotically like this.” (Abendzeitung) The second part of the night is devoted to Sergei Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. Here, the BRSO soars to great achievements in sound, creating a finale “with vertiginous vehemence and power of sound” (Bachtrack). PROGRAM: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5; Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Gil Shaham in Concert

Sunday, the 29th of June, 2014, marks the 100th anniversary of Rafael Kubelík’s birth, Chief Conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks from 1961 to 1979. Violinist Gil Shaham and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin have dedicated this concerts to the memory of the great artist and human being, Rafael Kubelík, who has left an indelible mark on the orchestra for many years right to the present day. On the program Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major “Titan”.

Gardiner conducts Haydn, Mendelssohn and Bruckner

Sir John Eliot Gardiner is most famous for his interpretations of Baroque music on period instruments, but his repertoire and discography are not limited to early music. In this production he is conducting the BR Symphony Orchestra with a program including Joseph Haydn’s: “Insanae et vanae curae”, Mendelsohn-Bartholdy’s Symphony No. 5 in D major/D minor (“Reformation) and Anton Bruckner’s Mass No. 1 in D minor.

The Odeonsplatz Concert – “Russian Night”

The 2014 open air concert with Mariss Jansons and the Balalaika-ensemble Terem-Quartet from the stunning Odeonsplatz in Munich includes works by Pjotr Iljitsch TCHAIKOVSKY: Capriccio Italien op. 45, Alexander TCHAIKOVSKY: Garden Symphony – Concert for Balalaika-quartet and orchestra (dedicated to Mariss Jansons – world premiere) / Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH: Festive Overture, op. 96 / Aram KHATCHATURIAN: Music from “Spartakus” and “Gayaneh” / Alexander GLASUNOV: Music from “Raymonda” / Nikolai RIMSKY-KOSRAKOV: Capriccio espagnol

Max Raabe & Palast Orchester – A Night in Berlin

“Max Raabe & Palast Orchester” are internationally renowned for entertainment at its best. The reason for their success lies in the uniqueness and excellent quality of their performance. The classically trained musicians work as seriously at the interpretation of their music as they would at that of a composition by Beethoven. Max’s drily witty concert announcements provide a humorous counterpoint and a main attraction in the show. Quote: “Because perhaps a woman brings her husband to a concert and he might not like the singer or the music, but he may like the humor of the jokes.”

In the Maze – Jörg Widmann

Clarinettist, conductor and composer Jörg Widmann is working on a composition. He has been commissioned to write a large-scale trumpet concerto (“Towards Paradise”) for the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The film accompanies Widmann on this journey, from the very first drafts of the piece to the premiere performance, taking the audience through diverse psychic and sonic realms. Music takes on a life of its own in the moment of writing, believes Jörg Widmann. It assumes its own form, becoming a living being that forges its own path. As such, it remains a fragment, because it is not what he, the writer, had intended. For Widmann, the image that best describes this progression is a maze. We follow Jörg Widmann into his maze, reaching for the thread that runs through his life and work. Together with him, we experience the ups and downs, the euphoric moments as well as the moments of crisis that are brought about by the process of writing.

War and Peace

This ‘War and Peace’ will go down as a milestone in Jurowski’s tenure at the State Opera, and in Tcherniakov’s often divisive career. They rise to meet the moment, overcoming the work’s near untenability not only to argue for its place in the canon, but also to use it as a vehicle for a passionate statement against Russian nationalism.” (The New York Times) Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace is one of the monumental works in opera history and rarely performed because of its sheer violence and complexity: More than 70 characters are cast for this four-hour opera, which is based on Tolstoy’s masterpiece. With the appropriate preparation time, the Bayerische Staatsoper, one of the world’s top opera houses, has taken on this major work under the baton of its general music director Vladimir Jurowski and staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of the most celebrated directors and born and raised in Russia – at the same time an expert on the subject.

Jenufa

Leoš Janácek’s third opera, with its echoes of folk music from the composer’s native Moravia, was his first real success and got the name “Moravian national opera”. Besides

this, Janácek’s music has a special quality: while it explores psychological extremes leading to violence and infanticide and lays bare characters’ emotions in an unsparing manner,

no one is judged. Jenufa has a special relationship with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden: when it premiered in Berlin in 1924, its success on the German stage was assured until nowadays. “Rattle reveals a dynamic understanding of Janácek’s musical language in a reading that’s urgent, unsentimental and richly flavoured” (bachtrack.com). The FAZ described the production as “a beguiling mixture of speaking articulation and tonal roundness.”